The Official England Thread- The Team We All Support [Vol 3]

[Muzzer79]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

TWODs said:

I guarantee you, if Bobby R, El Tel, hell even Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan, Sven, Fabio, Glen, Hodgson and Steve Mclaren, would have been able to achieve equal 'success' if not better outcomes with the same players and routes.

Really. Let's take Hodgson. 2014, never got out of the group. 1 point from 9. Costa Rica topped the group with 7. Costa Rica, 7 times as many points as us.
2016, never had the Southgate luck with an easy draw, as he came up against that footballing superpower that is Iceland.

Honestly, what rubbish. Southgate is no Carlo Ancelotti, but you cannot seriously lump him in with a dud like Hodgson.

McLaren never even took us to the Euros, lost 2-3 to Croatia in the last qualifier. And that was when Croatia were a nothing team. They'd only been a country for about 5 minutes.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Monday 1st July 21:51

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

[Marniet]

Muzzer79 said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

TWODs said:

I guarantee you, if Bobby R, El Tel, hell even Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan, Sven, Fabio, Glen, Hodgson and Steve Mclaren, would have been able to achieve equal 'success' if not better outcomes with the same players and routes.

Really. Let's take Hodgson. 2014, never got out of the group. 1 point from 9. Costa Rica topped the group with 7. Costa Rica, 7 times as many points as us.
2016, never had the Southgate luck with an easy draw, as he came up against that footballing superpower that is Iceland.

Honestly, what rubbish. Southgate is no Carlo Ancelotti, but you cannot seriously lump him in with a dud like Hodgson.

McLaren never even took us to the Euros, lost 2-3 to Croatia in the last qualifier. And that was when Croatia were a nothing team. They'd only been a country for about 5 minutes.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Monday 1st July 21:51

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

Indeed was that not with Portugal in 2000 where they blew a 2-1 lead ?

[TEKNOPUG]

Muzzer79 said:

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

Portugal has Costa, Pinto, Gomes and Figo. We had Wise and Heskey as subs ...

[Yazza54]

I wouldn't fear Portugal or France at this point. But Spain would destroy us.

Not convinced we are going any further anyway. Hope we can step it up against the swiss.

[Gargamel]

Could be an awesome set of games for England

Switzerland, then Austria and Germany in the final. A Teutonic trio if you will.

[Yazza54]

Gargamel said:

Could be an awesome set of games for England

Switzerland, then Austria and Germany in the final. A Teutonic trio if you will.

I think Spain will dispatch Germany and we would be lucky to get through Switzerland and Austria based on our current form and theirs!!!

[coldel]

TEKNOPUG said:

Muzzer79 said:

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

Portugal has Costa, Pinto, Gomes and Figo. We had Wise and Heskey as subs ...

I think its been well documented recently that despite those names we had, the camp was split and never playing as a team. With the Manyoo lot keeping away from the rest of the squad. No wonder they always looked disjointed and unable to function.

And yes the Portugal squad at the time was called their golden generation too, they had an amazing set of players.

Watched last night and I thought any club could do well to just sign the Slovenia back four, they were immense. The boy wonder Sesko will be the guy kicking himself right now with that weak effort when clean through, noticed he didnt take a penalty either.

[Legend83]

coldel said:

I think its been well documented recently that despite those names we had, the camp was split and never playing as a team. With the Manyoo lot keeping away from the rest of the squad. No wonder they always looked disjointed and unable to function.

And yes the Portugal squad at the time was called their golden generation too, they had an amazing set of players.

Watched last night and I thought any club could do well to just sign the Slovenia back four, they were immense. The boy wonder Sesko will be the guy kicking himself right now with that weak effort when clean through, noticed he didnt take a penalty either.

That was Sesko's moment right there and he fluffed it!

[epom]

Gargamel said:

Could be an awesome set of games for England

Switzerland, then Austria and Germany in the final. A Teutonic trio if you will.

That's more like it, positivity. Its coming.....

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Muzzer79 said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

TWODs said:

I guarantee you, if Bobby R, El Tel, hell even Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan, Sven, Fabio, Glen, Hodgson and Steve Mclaren, would have been able to achieve equal 'success' if not better outcomes with the same players and routes.

Really. Let's take Hodgson. 2014, never got out of the group. 1 point from 9. Costa Rica topped the group with 7. Costa Rica, 7 times as many points as us.
2016, never had the Southgate luck with an easy draw, as he came up against that footballing superpower that is Iceland.

Honestly, what rubbish. Southgate is no Carlo Ancelotti, but you cannot seriously lump him in with a dud like Hodgson.

McLaren never even took us to the Euros, lost 2-3 to Croatia in the last qualifier. And that was when Croatia were a nothing team. They'd only been a country for about 5 minutes.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Monday 1st July 21:51

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

Yup, a two legged play off where we lost the home leg 0-1, to Scotland

And there's the other side of being England manager, your image, your ability to united the country, and to navigate the press. Hoddle wasn't a bad manager tactically, a gritty 0-0 draw away in Italy to qualify top of the group for the 98 WC, and a great performance v Argentina when down to 10 men that we lost on pens but deserved to win. But then again, he didn't think Michael Owen was a natural goal scorer, believed there was no point in practising penalties (we went out on pens), took the team to see a faith healer () and as for children with bone cancer, well fk 'em, they had it coming because of their sins in a previous life.

Overall Southgate has done a pretty good job, after the whole Hodgson calamity and Big Sam debacle. Some integrity and decency has been restored. No scandals, he hasn't been caught with his fingers in the till, or spouting religious claptrap to the press. The players seem to enjoy being part of the England set up, there's not club rivalry between players, and we're still in this tournament (although I don't expect to win it).

Whoever comes next is taking over a far better situation than GS walked into.

[JuniorD]

Sweary so NSFW

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/YytiivYa3tBpGJ4b/

[coldel]

What we have to remember is that we arent judging southgate on past tournaments
We are judging him on the last 4 games and on the ones leading up to the tournament
Its clear, to even the most blind, that he is not making good decisions nor is he making the most of this group of players

[Byker28i]

"If I had a pound for every sideways pass I could pay a month of Kyle Walkers child support"

[Carl_VivaEspana]

Pickford on Luke Shaw:

"Speaking to talkSPORT, Pickford said: "He was ready to come on last night. But I'm not the manager. He's ready, Luke says he's ready. There will have to be changes with Marc Guehi suspended but that's what a 26-man squad is all about. Everyone's got to be ready and everyone is ready to play.""

[Dave200]

Jinx said:

sugerbear said:

2 attempts on target for the whole game is dreadful.

Hit the post and Foden had it in the back of the net as well - but yes it was dreadful.

If Foden could have stayed onside and Kane could have directed an unchallenged header goalward from 6yds out it would have been 4 very viable attempts and one post.

Suddenly if the individual players make better decisions, that game looks a lot different. But apparently that's on Southgate.

[Dave200]

Muzzer79 said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

TWODs said:

I guarantee you, if Bobby R, El Tel, hell even Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan, Sven, Fabio, Glen, Hodgson and Steve Mclaren, would have been able to achieve equal 'success' if not better outcomes with the same players and routes.

Really. Let's take Hodgson. 2014, never got out of the group. 1 point from 9. Costa Rica topped the group with 7. Costa Rica, 7 times as many points as us.
2016, never had the Southgate luck with an easy draw, as he came up against that footballing superpower that is Iceland.

Honestly, what rubbish. Southgate is no Carlo Ancelotti, but you cannot seriously lump him in with a dud like Hodgson.

McLaren never even took us to the Euros, lost 2-3 to Croatia in the last qualifier. And that was when Croatia were a nothing team. They'd only been a country for about 5 minutes.

Edited by TwigtheWonderkid on Monday 1st July 21:51

And Keegan?

A manager who only got to Euro 2000 through a play off with Scotland, with a squad including Beckham, Owen, Shearer, Scholes, Neville, before being dumped out having blown a 2-1 lead against Romania to lose 3-2.

Short memories football fans…..

Agreed.

You could argue there are better coaches in the Premiership (maybe a couple), who wouldn't actually take the England job. But Southgate is comfortably one of the best England managers of all time.

This isn't a golden generation of players. Of the 9 starters who play in England, two of them (Rice and Foden) made most pundits' teams of the season.

7 of those players aren't even the best in their position in the Premier League, let alone the best in Europe. Let than sink in.

Look at Rice, and he's not even the best player at his club this season. That was Odegaard.

Look at Foden, and can you point to a single amazing performance for England?

Kane has had an excellent season, but he's looked individually poor in his preferred role for England. Bellingham has played a tonne of minutes for Madrid this season, and he looks knackered.

So in all of that, you've got maybe 3 properly world class international players, one of whom is knackered.

Put all of that together, and it looks to me like they are playing at about the level you'd expect. But people would rather whinge about Southgate than face facts.

Edited by Dave200 on Tuesday 2nd July 10:51

[TEKNOPUG]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Overall Southgate has done a pretty good job, after the whole Hodgson calamity and Big Sam debacle. Some integrity and decency has been restored. No scandals, he hasn't been caught with his fingers in the till, or spouting religious claptrap to the press. The players seem to enjoy being part of the England set up, there's not club rivalry between players, and we're still in this tournament (although I don't expect to win it).

Whoever comes next is taking over a far better situation than GS walked into.

He's very good at everything accept the actual stuff happening on the pitch. If he'd employed an experienced assistant manager, who had actually acheived success previously, rather than a load of yes men who've never done anything; JIMMY FLOYD HASSELBAINK:

FA's own website said:

Last role was at Burton Albion, who he left in September 2022 when they were bottom of League One......

[272BHP]

Dave200 said:

So in all of that, you've got maybe 3 properly world class international players, one of whom is knackered.

3-4 world class players in an international team is usually called an abundance of riches.

[Dave200]

272BHP said:

Dave200 said:

So in all of that, you've got maybe 3 properly world class international players, one of whom is knackered.

3-4 world class players in an international team is usually called an abundance of riches.

There are plenty of other teams in the tournament with the same "abundance of riches" as England. As an example, Portugal with their 3-4 world class players also struggled past the Slovenians last night. The Portuguese are 9/1 to win it, and you'll struggle to get better than Evens if you wanted to bet on England.

Of England's "abundance of riches" you've got:
- Rice, not even the best player at his club on current form
- Foden, I'm struggling to recall a single decent England performance
- Kane, isn't playing well and is barely managing the basics
- Bellingham, looks absolutely knackered

If they are England's "3-4 world class players", is it really any surprise they've looked underwhelming?

Perhaps what we're seeing right now is just England's level?

Edited by Dave200 on Tuesday 2nd July 12:55

[SWoll]

The entire attitude of this England squad both baffles and annoys me. They're a like a cult with Southgate as the leader filling their heads with a victim mindset, hence why the newest recruits appear to be the least affected.

Their performances on and off the pitch have been in the most part an embarrassment and I'm at the point where I don't really care if they win on Saturday as feel they see any success now more as sticking 2 fingers up to anyone who dares criticize their obvious shortcomings rather than something joyful to be shared with the fans.

I don't think Southgate has ever gotten over what happened at Euro 96.